Day 110: Fontaines D.C. – Romance
I feel like I’m a hard 31. I was born to be 60-something, now I’m just playing the waiting game. These days, I live the lifestyle of someone decades older than me: it’s Friday night, I’m about to eat a sensible meal of fish and vegetables and probably crochet a bit before bed. Tomorrow, I’m going to a concert in a cathedral, average age probably at least 45+.
Album cover courtesy of XL Recordings
My old lady thing extends to me consuming a lot of old media, and that includes music. I struggle to think of too many recent bands I regularly listen to, or even groups who are currently touring but not in a “We’re playing the hits from decades ago, we’re still going!”- type of way. OK, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but still.
All of this to say, I’m in the market for a new band to be interested in. I’d heard all the buzz about Fontaines D.C., so I thought they might be just the ticket. I watched a few live videos of them yesterday and I’m fully convinced that all the hype is warranted, and I haven’t even heard a full album yet.
Fontaines D.C. are an Irish band that was formed after the group met at a music college in Dublin. Originally, they connected over their love of literature and even released a few poetry collections together, but they pivoted to music and started self-releasing singles in 2015. Their 2019 debut album Dogrel was released to critical acclaim and it was even nominated for a Mercury Prize.
The group released their fourth record Romance in 2024, again to much critical acclaim. It was nominated for two Grammy’s, one of them being Best Rock Album, but they were beaten in that category by Paramore. The band says that Romance was inspired by manga and Italian cinema and the general theme of the album is built around a fictional dystopian industrial city. Their first three albums explored Ireland and Irishness, and Romance was their first record that completely deviated from that.
This is one of those instances where every single bit of praise that’s been heaped on them is well deserved. Fontaines D.C. are something else. Romance is very approachable and almost pop-reminiscent at times, and it’s the sort of music that crosses over genre lines to be easily appreciated by anyone, even if they’re not into post-punk or indie rock or whatever category these guys are in since they don’t really neatly fit anywhere.
Oddly, the songs manage to sound completely new and vaguely familiar at the same time, but I can’t think of any other group that they sound like. You can maybe hear influences of bands like Smashing Pumpkins or The Cure, but there’s no direct reason for it to sound so nostalgic. Maybe it occasionally sounds a bit like ‘90s rock and grunge, but it’s still completely unique.
The opener of the record “Romance” is among my favourites from the record, as are “Desire”, “In the Modern World” and “Sundowner”. Maybe my least favourite track off the album is the biggest hit, “Starburster”. It’s still a decent song but I just wasn’t feeling it as much as the rest of them. I’ve definitely heard it before and didn’t deem the band as anything too special based only on that. But as happens ever so often, I was wrong.
I had this brief moment during the first few tracks where I was reminded of the intensity of the feeling of when you were younger and you heard a record that you completely fell in love with. And now I have three more of theirs to go. Romance is a 9.5/10. In a way I do sort of regret giving Hasselhoff’s Christmas record a 6 recently, there’s just no way this is only three and a half points better.